Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXXXIII--The Cars: My Best Friend's Girl

Hard as it may be to believe nearly forty years down the road, but when the Cars released their first album in 1978 they were right up there with a slew of bands from the mid to late 70's such as Elvis Costello, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Police, Talking Heads, and Dire Straits as far as bands that all the cool kids (or music dorks) were listening to and music critics were fawning over.  Alas, unlike the the other performers who shared their time frame (with the exception of Dire Straits who pretty much followed a similar career path as the Cars), the Cars stopped pushing the envelope musically after their first LP and headed straight into massive mainstream success and rested upon the laurels of their debut album.

But, oh, what laurels to rest upon....

Formed circa 1976 in Boston Massachusetts, the Cars exploded onto the music scene in 1978 on the heels of their aptly entitled debut, The Cars, which would go on to sell six million copies and remain on the Billboard 200 for 139 weeks (and rank at #284 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list),  Over the course of the next ten years the Cars would release five more albums, garner a couple of Grammy nominations, win the first ever Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 (Zzzzz....), sell millions more records, and call it quits in 1988.   Twenty-two years later they reformed and released the obligatory reunion album replete with the obligatory reunion tour (sadly, co-founder--along with Ric Ocasek--Benjamin Orr had passed away in 2000 from pancreatic cancer), and they remain together to the present day, still touring and still hoping for that call from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that so many of their contemporaries noted above (except Dire Straits) have already received.

Fun (and slightly sad) Fact:  Nirvana performed a cover version of "My Best Friend's Girl" at their final concert in 1994.

Opening with a funkily tuned guitar that until I did my weekly half-assed research I had always assumed was a bass guitar line, and mixing in some hand claps shortly thereafter, "My Best Friend's Girl" can best be described as quirky fun--without being a novelty song.  The rather strange subject matter (a man salaciously describing his best friend's girlfriend...who it just so happens, used to be his girlfriend), Ric Ocasek's matter of fact vocals, and, of all things, some rockabilly guitar licks surrounded by synth pop technology made for a song (as with others on their debut album) that wasn't quite like anything I'd ever heard before in 1978, and made for months of delicious fun singing along with the band's backing vocalists as they harmonized "my best friend's girlfriend" again and again in support of Ocasek's oddball lyrics and lovestruck vocals.  Alas, the song would only reach #35 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, but would go to #3 in the U.K. (why are there so many cool kids in the British Isles?).  Still, it's a delightful blast from my past, and has not diminished in my eyes one iota in the last forty years, and is just as joyous and catchy as the first time I heard it.

Lyric Sheet:  "You're always dancing down the street/With your suede blue eyes..."

Enjoy:

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emaycee